Hopes and Dreams
by CCroquette
Summary: The war is over, and the past is not the present is not the future. That doesn't mean it's easy to forget.
1. Chapter 1

**1945, Helsinki**

Tino sits in the half-dark kitchen, one foot propped on the rungs of the well-worn chair next to him, one foot on the floor. One arm, folded listlessly across his lap.

One arm.

His stomach growls. He should make breakfast.

There's bread in the breadbox. Tino almost gets up, and then remembers that he'd have to slice it. From where he is even the distance to the counter feels nigh-insurmountable, and in the end it's easier to stay put. He slides his gaze away from the breadbox, and down to the scuffed floor, and knows he's being pathetic, because it's just bread.

It's stupid to give up over bread. It's nothing compared to anything in the last six years, in the last hundred. Tino reminds himself that at least one arm's still working, and tries to smile, but he's tired. So tired.

He should make breakfast.

It's long past noon. He glances over at the clock for the dozenth time and does his best not to look at his left shoulder, where everything ends abruptly in one pinned-up sleeve - lost territory, reflected in a loss of himself. The arm will come back, he hopes, when his people have had time to come to terms with it, and feel the loss less keenly. Or when he takes back what's his. He swallows, and the hand in his lap clenches into a fist. He can't stop fighting, even now.

A knock sounds at the door.

Tino doesn't jump to answer it. He leans a little to the side, and nearly overbalances himself, and catches a glimpse of the visitor through a gap in the curtains.

Ruotsi.

The smile comes now, bitterly. Of course. Of course it's him. Of course he'd show up now and - what - try to make it better - try to fix things for him - _coddle_ him as though he were a child.

Children don't have blood on their hands.

There's a part of him that's tempted to let him do it, to open up the door and let him in and just sit back and let someone else take care of him. He'd probably tell Tino to go lie down, and help him up to bed, and tuck him in and make him tea or - soup, it's _always_ soup -

Tino hates that he's tempted by the idea.

He shouldn't take his help. He doesn't need to. He's more than capable of struggling on his own and now that he's done it he can't go back. It's nothing like it was and now -

Now is not before, and he's alone.

Ruotsi knocks again.

Where was he when it started? Where was he when they needed bullets? Where was he before it came to this? Where was he when -

Tino thinks back to the start of it, to a handful of volunteers and a handful of boxes and it was nothing compared to what could have been, what might have been - and where was _he_ -

He stops himself. He knows that it's uncharitable, that they all have obligations.

He doesn't owe the door an answer.

Defiantly, he sits in the kitchen as the knocking persists, and fixes the breadbox with a stare. Gradually, the knocking dies down and he watches through the curtains from the corners of his eyes as Ruotsi goes away.

Alone, again. As it should be.

Slowly, Tino stands, and takes the bread out of the breadbox, and reaches for a knife. He won't take anyone's help.

He can't.

Not now. Not anymore.

Never again.

**1948**

It hurts.

Sweat pours down Tino's face as he grimaces, half-smothered by a pillow. He lies curled around himself in bed, his right hand clutching where his left arm used to be, and tries to get through it. It started hurting recently, a never-ending ache, but lately it's become more insistent, more violent, and harder to subdue.

A spasm wracks Tino's body, and he growls a curse as his fingers clutch tighter. He hasn't slept in days, hasn't eaten. He's tried to turn to drinking, but it doesn't dull the pain. He suspects that only death would end it, and he's damned if he'll try that. All he can do is go on.

He's got no choice but to sit it through, to lie there and take it as it feels like his shoulder's been ripped open. He tries to smile, because he hopes this means the arm's growing back, but the pain spikes across his shoulder and he grits his teeth instead.

There is a knock at the front door and Tino ignores it.

He's too busy strangling down a scream.

**1950**

He's whole again.

His left arm's come back, new-pink, ever-so-slightly paler and more sensitive. It's not quite perfect; his movements are clumsier and his shoulder aches in the mornings. He cannot play the kantele, and after so long being off-balance it's hard to stand up straight. Nevertheless he meets every morning smiling, because he's here, and now himself.

Ruotsi hasn't stopped his knocking. He comes around every so often, and every so often Tino pretends he doesn't hear. He doesn't plan on hearing.

It works out well until one morning in early spring. Tino's walking past the front window, and chances to look up.

Ruotsi's standing there.

He has one arm outstretched, poised to knock, and stands looking through the same front window. For a split second their eyes meet, and everything stands still.

Tino stands frozen at the window, and wonders what to do.

Deliberately, Ruotsi knocks.

For a moment, two moments, Tino considers walking away. He doesn't need him. He makes to turn on his heel, and as he's about to disappear a thousand years of history weigh him down, make him pause. He looks at Ruotsi - _Berwald_ - standing there, and finds he doesn't have the heart to ignore him so directly.

Slowly, Tino opens the door.

"Hei," he says. He doesn't try to smile.

Berwald looks different, a little thinner; his suit doesn't fit him quite right and his glasses are black-framed plastic things that cover half his face and do his eyes no favors, but otherwise he's none the worse for wear. Better-looking than Tino.

Isn't that always the way of it?

_Where were you when they took my arm?_ Tino wants to ask. But no, that's long over and done with, and Berwald is standing here now.

Should that count for something?

Before Tino can finish the mental arithmetic, Berwald speaks.

"Suomi," he says, a pained look in his eyes, and then more softly, "Tino."

Even softer yet, "Anteeksi."

_I'm sorry_.

Wordlessly, Tino steps aside, and lets him in.


	2. Chapter 2

B**1950**/b

One chance meeting through a window begets an entire series of awkward, stilted visits. The first time, they sit unnaturally straight-backed on hard and timeworn kitchen chairs, and stare at each other in silence after the small talk peters out, until at last Berwald - inept, maybe, but not an idiot - excuses himself, and Tino tries to act as though it's nothing.

The second time, Berwald knocks with a greater confidence, and moves with surer feet toward the kitchen, and the small talk lasts just a little longer before it dies. When he comes for a third visit, emboldened by such modest success, Tino makes them both coffee, and when they drink to mitigate the silence it becomes something almost familiar.

Almost, only.

They sit not-quite-comfortably in the kitchen, and talk of the same inconsequential things -

_Weather's improvin'._

_Yeah._ _Not so rainy. More sugar? - _

- and all the while Tino wonders how it's come to this, and where it goes from here. Familiarity breeds betrayal and yet he's seen what happens when he strikes out on his own: two wars, three wars, the last against his own co-belligerents, and even now he doesn't sleep because he still can't come to terms.

There's coffee, though, and Berwald's badly-mangled Finnish, and he tries to hang onto it without making it something more. Without remembering. They used to be able to talk, and now -

No.

He oughtn't to think, he knows, about the way things were. There's the way things were, and the way things are, and there's no sense in thinking on it because there's no going back.

All the sense in the world doesn't help him take his own advice.

Through the weeks of uneasy visiting he lets Berwald into his home and drinks in the threadbare kitchen and doesn't know what course to take. He can't decide if he should let bygones be bygones or carry the grudge. Instead as yet another war rages, this one his own, inside his head, Tino makes coffee, and tries to talk, and all the while he wonders, brooding.

All the wondering doesn't help, much.

After a dozen cups of coffee and a myriad of half-started sentences they still can't figure out what to say beyond the usual cursory pleasantries. Berwald speaks more than he does, tries to make up for Tino's reticence, but a language so dependent on vowels was never meant for mumblers, and his words don't last long before they falter.

Still, they soldier on, fumbling through the motions, until one day Berwald stays too late, and Tino doesn't kick him out, and that's how they end up on the second floor, staring at an empty bed.

Berwald clears his throat, red-faced. "Don' have to-"

"I don't have any other place to put you."

"Couch-"

"It's terrible." There's a reason they sit in the kitchen. Even the floor would be better, and he's not going to do that. After a thousand years and a dozen cups of coffee he owes him more courtesy than that - but he doesn't owe him an only spot in his bed.

A silence falls and in it Tino can practically hear everything shattering apart. He reaches for the blankets and feels an ache building behind his eyes because he knows he has to piece things back together and yet he doesn't know how.

It's nothing, isn't it? They've slept next to each other, before, a hundred thousand times and it didn't always have to mean something. It's nothing, that's all, and maybe it'll make things feel right.

He pulls back the covers, and bids Berwald to lie down.

Without a word, Berwald's hands turn to the buttons of his too-big shirt and Tino follows suit with his own clothing, modern garments adding a strange twist to what used to be an evening ritual. They stand there by the bed in undershirts and shorts, a shadow of their former closeness, until finally Berwald climbs in, and Tino perches on the edge of the mattress, reaching for the lamp.

He feels eyes on him, then, and catches Berwald looking. He follows the gaze up to his left shoulder, thickly ringed with scar tissue, and very carefully keeps silent.

Softly, Berwald asks, "What happened t'yer arm?"

Just as softly, Tino answers, "I lost it."

He could say more. He chooses not to.

Berwald frowns up at him, indecipherable, and Tino wants more than anything to turn away from that gaze. He can't. He stares back, instead, defiant.

Berwald turns away first, and Tino turns off the light and lies down, trying and failing to will himself to relax. His heart pounds, beating at his throat, and he doesn't know why he should feel so anxious. It's nothing. They're nothing. He's lost his arm and he's grown it back and it's over, now, and nothing.

Hesitantly in the darkness, Berwald reaches out toward the scars, fingers brushing against his left shoulder the way he might have once, to soothe him. Warm, and gentle, and -

No.

There's no going back.

He shrugs the hand away, roughly, and Berwald doesn't try again.

Tino rolls over, pretending nonchalance.

He doesn't sleep.


	3. Chapter 3

**1951**

Their strange ritual continues on into the new year, coffee and half-conversation and sometimes, rarely, sleep. Life stagnates, between the two of them, no talk of anything deeper than the weather and no discussion of what now. The small talk doesn't even get any lengthier.

It works, except for when it doesn't.

On a day in late February, a sentence comes out the wrong way and stilted conversation becomes something worse. One offhand remark starts it - Berwald spies a worn-out cabinet hinge and offers to help fix up the place and in that offer all Tino hears is taketaketake. That's it, the floodgates open, and he slams his coffee mug down on the table and every thought that's been building up in his head since forever suddenly aches to come pouring out. He's got words, again, and he intends to use them.

"No!" he tells him, and the vehemence of it surprises even himself. Berwald looks equally startled, and then Tino goes on to growl, "It's _my_ place," and that's when it becomes a fight.

It starts in Finnish, but it quickly progresses to a bilingual amalgamation of curses and shouts that takes them, screaming and gesturing and punching at the walls, from the kitchen into the living room, where there's space to stomp around.

"I can take care of myself!" Tino paces, an angry gesture punctuating his every word, and from the other side of the room Berwald faces him, perfectly still and no less furious.

"'S just -" he answers, but he's too slow and Tino cuts him off.

"Why do you always have to do this? Can't you ever leave me alone?"

" - damn stubborn -"

"I don't need you pushing back in here and trying to take over again! I'm through with it!"

"_Jus' tryin' t' help!_" With a scowl Berwald switches over to speaking Swedish; his Finnish might suffice for coffee conversation but it's nowhere near good enough for arguing and somehow that makes Tino even angrier.

"Help? Help?! Did you ever think that maybe I don't need your help anymore?!" It doesn't even matter what he's saying now; he's pretty sure Berwald hasn't been keeping up. It doesn't stop Tino from answering him, though, red-faced and seething.

"I needed it before! I needed it and you said that you were neutral!" He practically spits the last word, a more damning condemnation than any curse he's ever known. "I don't need it! You don't want to help, it's all about what it can get you - and I used to think you cared - "

Form the couch, Berwald glares, snarling. "i_Fuck's sake, 'f yer gonna yell at me at least use a language I c'n __understand!_"

At that, Tino's fists clench and he almost wants to hit him because he's had a thousand years to learn it and Tino's picked up Swedish, hasn't he, and isn't that _just how it always is_-

He sets his jaw and takes a breath and makes to scream an answer, he doesn't even know what, but he opens his mouth and his voice catches and his throat gives out with a painful tightness, spent from use after so many months of near-silence. He looks at Berwald, the shadow of a beleaguered past collapsed upon a run-down sofa, those ridiculous glasses half-swallowing his face -

- and, suddenly, Tino's so very tired.

There's no point in it anymore, is there? What good could it possibly do?

He has to piece things back together. Has to.

What choice has he got, really?

His head aches.

With dragging steps he stumbles to the kitchen and fumbles through the cabinet until he finds a bottle of something, label long-faded. It's cheap and it's old and it doesn't really matter, because it's strong enough to take it all away. Like a haggard ghost he reappears in the doorway and asks, hoarsely, "Want a drink?"

Hollow-eyed and weary, Berwald nods an affirmative.

It is a herculean task to stagger over to the battered sofa, so he doesn't. He makes it over the threshold, barely, and sinks down to sit against the wall instead. Berwald stares, and Tino stares back, and finally Berwald gets up and joins him.

He uncaps the bottle and takes a long hard swallow, burning away decades of loss and bitter anger. When he holds it out next to him, Berwald doesn't hesitate to do the same.

They pass the bottle between them, spend a silent night with only the rotgut and the sick yellow light of the lamp to keep them company, drinking until everything is fuzzy around the edges and maybe the past isn't forever, and maybe the future's not so bad. And maybe Berwald's head slumps against his shoulder, and maybe Tino doesn't care.

And maybe that's all right.


End file.
